This is going to be a post about Christmas. Why? Because it’s a festive celebration you can’t ignore. Not with all the painfully cheery Christmas music in the air, the turkey-and-ham promotions flooding the newspapers, and the ostentatious lights decorating the length of Orchard Road. By now you can tell that I’m slightly annoyed. I don’t understand myself, either. Why can’t I enjoy Christmas like normal people? It’s almost like a fear of Christmas that I have now. I just want to avoid it, pretend that it’s never going to happen.
—start of rant—
Maybe I’m annoyed because the stores are blatantly capitalizing on the “heart-warming”, gift-giving tradition of this occasion. Or maybe I’m more annoyed because I can’t believe that most of us, including me, are actually falling for it despite knowing what they’re doing because of the great discounts. I like shopping, far too much to keep my eyes off the sales rack and take a stand against consumerism, I’m sad to say.
The way I see it, we just use it as an excuse to party and pig out, so that we feel less guilty for doing it since there’s a(n) tradition/event “obliging” us to engage in such merrymaking. I’m not sure why we would feel guilty for wanting to party and pig out for nothing, but maybe its because we know how shallow it sounds when there’s no special occasion tied to it. By providing a justification for our desire to party, it transfers the responsibility of such partying from us to that of tradition, if you know what I mean.
But hey, feel free to disagree. I disagree with the above myself. I don’t really believe that people are that shallow. This is just the general feeling I get from the media, how they like to portray Christmas. I have utmost faith in humanity that we will continue to find real meaning in it no matter how much superficiality and consumerism clog the wheels of society.
I’m rambling a bit here. Forgive me if I have angered you. I just feel really bitter this year because I cannot travel. I don’t actually hate Christmas. I just hate how it’s not magical anymore. Christmas seems stripped of its meaning and magic now.
—end of rant—
On another note I do have a few Christmas wishes, some of them are material, some experiential, others plain weird. Don’t judge. This is my place to rant.
Experiential wishes
1. To have dark chocolate, lebkuchen, fruit cake, stollen and red wine on christmas eve night for dinner in the quiet of my own home. And maybe some yummy pastries like pain au chocolat. I’m not craving for savouries this year and I’m a little sick of cream-rich cakes, to be honest.
2. To travel Italy by train. Obviously this will not be fulfilled by Christmas but I hope to achieve it with some faith, research and luck sometime.
3. Great hair. Shiny, smoother, frizz-free, slightly wavy hair. Like that’s ever going to happen without hair serum, cream and designing jelly.
4. Winter in Singapore. ’nuff said.
Material wishes
(Since I’ve already admitted that I like shopping, I’m not even going to bother hiding the fact that I do have things, actual things, that I want. Most of them are clothes. *coughs and turns away in embarrassment*)
1. A floral flared short skirt in dark pink, with small florals. Preferably with some ruffles, or tiered. Something more laid-back, casual, feminine and whimsical-looking rather than flashy and trendy.
2. A simple, translucent buttoned blouse in light pink, lilac or dark green to pair with a white tank top underneath. I saw Lily wear this in HIMYM and I thought it looked really cute.
3. A T-shirt with Gustav Klimt’s painting ‘The Kiss’ printed on it.
4. ‘The Lake of Dead Languages’ by Carol Goodman. Kinokuniya doesn’t stock it D:
5. Nail polish! I just discovered the joy of painting my nails and I need yellow(canary or mustard), green(light green but not lime) and blue(midnight or baby).
At this moment, I can’t think of anymore things that I want. Not off the top of my head, anyway. But by now you can probably see why my Christmas wishes usually remain wishes. Even the clothes I want are so hard to find because I already have such specific requirements, and this isn’t even considering the fact that most shops stock sizes that are way too big for petites.
Although it would be a bit mean of me to hope so, I must say I hope not all your material wishes will be fulfilled before your birthday haha! This way, I will know what to get you which will not cause you to wrinkle your nose in disgust or annoyance at